The summer of '74 was one of the most blissful lifelong loser
David Cristiansen ever spent at the beautiful little former
fishing village of Santiago de la Ribera; and there were a good
few of those.
Each afternoon, he'd meet up with friends both male and female on
the jetty facing his apartment on the Mar Menor, which was more
or less deserted after lunch, where they'd listen to Bowie on
cassette, or Donny keening "Puppy Love" on a portable phonograph,
and generally enjoy being young and carefree in a decade of
endless possibilities.
To some youthful Spanish eyes back in '74-'76, David was an
almost impossibly exotic figure from what was then the most
radical and daring city in Europe, and he played his image up to
the hilt. In truth, though, he was barely less sheltered and
innocent than they, and how wonderful it felt for him to bask in
their soft Mediterranean loveliness for a few brief
seasons.
However, a change came over Spain with Franco's passing, and the
birth of the so-called "Movida", which could be said to be the
Spanish equivalent of London's Swinging Sixties revolution. So
that, by David's last vacation in La Ribera in the summer of '84,
it was he who was in awe of the local youth rather than the other
way around. For they seemed so cool to him, dancing their strange
jerky chicken wing dance to the latest New Pop hits from
Britain.
By then, of course, most of his old friends had vanished into
their young adult lives, and his time as the undisputed English
prince of La Ribera long passed.
He returned to London in late summer '74 with a deep tan and his
long hair bleached bright yellow by the sun.
Only days afterwards, he found himself on HMS Ministry, moored
then as today on the Embankment near Temple station. This
involved his passing through Waterloo mainline station, which
wasn't tourist-friendly as it is today, with its cafés and
baguette bars, but a dingy intimidating place complete with pub
and old-style barber.
There, he was approached by an old sailor who kept going on about
how good looking he was; but he was no predator, just a sweet
lonely old Scotsman who wanted someone to talk to for a few
minutes, and David was happy to oblige.
He even went so far as to agree to a meeting with him the same
time the following week, but he had no intention of keeping it.
Besides, it wasn't long before HMS Thamesis was on its way to
Hamburg, second largest city of Germany and its principle
port.
Once they'd arrived, one of the CPOs warned David not to wander
around Hamburg alone, for fear he might end up being ravaged and
dumped in some back alley, or worse.
He duly joined up with a group of about three or four other
ratings on his first night ashore, and they headed straight for
the Reeperbahn in the bewitchingly vicious St Pauli red light
district, which was in such stark contrast to the leafy outer
suburbs, where David found himself, possibly a day or so later,
through a specially organised coach trip.
A gang of them ended up in a park where David had his picture
taken on a bridge by a reporter for the Surrey Comet, before a
group of breathless tittering schoolgirls asked him to join them
in some photos.
On the way back to the ship, one of the sailors announced he'd
been quite a hit with the Hamburg teenyboppers, while another
wryly opined:
"It's cos 'e's blond, innit..."
Whatever the truth, their simple unaffected joy of life must have
seemed so touching to David, especially in the light of what
girls barely older than they were subjecting themselves to a mere
few miles away.
Some months later, in what was by then '75, David became a
student at Prestlands Technical College which lay, then as now,
on the fringes of Weybridge, an affluent outer suburb of south
west London.
In semi-pastoral Prestlands, as in his beloved La Ribera, he
learned to be a social being after years of near-seclusion, first
at Welbourne and then as a home student. So, attention came to be
a potent narcotic for him in the mid 1970s.
However, despite constant displays of flamboyant self-confidence,
those who tried to get to know to know him on an intimate level
found themselves confronted with a paradoxically inhibited
individual.
The regular Prestlands Disco was a special event for David. And
on one occasion early on in a Disco night, he got up in front of
what seemed like the whole college and delivered a solo dance
performance, possibly with white silk scarf flailing in the air,
to a fiery Glam tune by Bebop Deluxe to frenzied cheers and
applause.
On another, a trio of roughs who may have gate crashed the Disco
only to see in David the worst possible example of the feckless
wastrel student strutting and posturing in unmanly white, took
him aside at the end of the night, doubtless intent on a touch of
the old ultra-violence:
"Oy you, we bin watchin' you, you're a poof, ain'tcha..."
But David stood his ground, insisting that despite what they may
have thought about him, he was just as straight as they.
Apparently convinced, they then vanished into the departing
crowds after muttering a few dark threats.
'75 again, and David's music, swimming and Martial Arts sessions
were no more. But the private lessons continued with Mark, a slim
young academic with long darkish curly hair who lived alone but
for several black cats in long time Rock star haven
Richmond-on-Thames. For as well as being a private tutor, he was
a successful session musician.
Specialising in the French Symbolist poets, he exerted a strong
influence on David in terms of his growing passion for European
Modernist art and culture. However, it was the less well known
literature of Spain they studied together, from the anonymous
16th Century picaresque novel "Lazarillo de Tormes", and
embracing Quevedo, Galdós, Machado, Dario and Lorca.
Mark was also an early encourager of David's writing, a lifelong
passion that would degenerate in time into a chronic case of
cacoethes scribendi; or the irresistible compulsion to write. As
a result of this, he became incapable of finishing a single
cohesive piece of writing until well into the eighties when he
managed to complete a short story and a novel, both of which he
went on to destroy but for a few fragments.
It was significantly through Mark that David came under the spell
of the Berlin of the Weimar Republic of 1919 to 1933:
After he'd expressed interest in a copy, conspicuously placed in
front of him on the desk they shared, of one of Christopher
Isherwood's Berlin novels, "Mr Norris Changes Trains", Mark told
him in animated tones that it had inspired the 1972 movie version
of the Kander and Ebb musical, "Cabaret". In fact, while a work
of art in its own right written for the screen by Jay Allen, and
directed by former dancer Bob Fosse, "Cabaret" had been largely
informed by Isherwood's only other Berlin story, "Goodbye to
Berlin".
Seeing "Cabaret" later on that year was a life-transforming
experience for David, one of only a handful brought about by a
film, and the beginning of a near-obsessive preoccupation with
the Berlin of the Weimar era.
So much that has become familiar to the West and beyond in the
last half-century, from the deconstructive philosophies that
dominate our academia, to the theatre of outrage that is the
essence of Rock music, pre-existed in some form in the Berlin of
the Golden Twenties, during which she existed as the undisputed
world epicentre of the Modern impulse.
Under her auspices, great artistic freedom thrived in the shape
of the painters of the New Objectivity movement, such as
Beckmann, Dix and Grosz, the staccato cabaret-style music of Kurt
Weill, Fritz Lang's dystopian "Metropolis", and the provocative
dancing of Cabaret Queen Anita Berber, and her epicene companion,
Sebastian Droste. And then there's the notorious sexual
liberalism, which, through pictorial depictions of her cabarets
and night clubs, has carried a power to shock even as far as the
jaded 21st Century.
But beneath the glittering carapace, she bore within her the
seeds of her own ruin, for despite the genius that flourished
alongside the licentiousness, she was operating largely in
defiance of the Judeo-Christian moral values that have long
formed the basis of Western society. Given that several other
European and American cities were hardly less hysterically
dissolute than Berlin, it's little wonder that the key Modernist
decade of the twenties has been described by some critics as the
beginning of the end of Western civilisation.
In its wake came the Great Depression, the unspeakable horrors of
the Second World War, and the collapse of the greatest empire the
world had ever seen, all of which were succeeded in turn by the
dawning of the Rock and Roll era, and its quasi-religious
exaltation of youth, which some critics see as the very triumph
of Western decadence.
Decadence...that loaded word had a very special meaning and power
for David Cristiansen in the mid 1970s ever since his mother had
used it, in fact, in reference to a series of photos of Germany's
Weimar era featured in an edition of the Sunday Times
magazine:
"Why do people want to be decadent?" She'd asked, as if genuinely
concerned for those featured, which of course she was, having
been raised in a Salvationist home in the idyllic Vancouver of
the 1920s, and therefore imbued for life despite herself with a
Christian worldview.
But to David Cristiansen, the answer was obvious, because in his
Rock and Roll eyes, decadence was so heavy with the mysteries of
the most forbidden sins that he could scarcely wait to become its
incarnation; and while he would fall far, far short of his goal,
he'd almost die trying to attain it.

David made no less than three sea voyages in '75, two as a
civilian and one with the RNR, as well as spending a week with
them docked at the Pool of London.
The first of these was to Amsterdam, via Edinburgh and St. Malo,
on a three-masted topsail schooner TS Sir Francis Drake of the
Society for the Training of Young Seafarers.
Among his shipmates were his 17 year old brother Dany, several
young men from Scotland and the north of England, some recent
recruits to the RN, and a handful of older "mates" who'd been
given authority over the rank and file of deck hands.
In overall charge, though, was the suave Ship's Captain, who also
happened to be an alumnus of David's own alma mater of
Welbourne.
It was an all-male crew, and David was well-liked at first, even
if his popularity faded in time, with a few good pals remaining
him, such as the small cherubic southerner with long dark hair
worn shoulder length like the young Jack Wilde, who stayed loyal
to him after they'd tried to impress a couple of girls together
during a brief stay in St Malo, France.
He got on fine with a few of the others, but Jack was a true
prince who'd helped him out in his time of need:
What happened is that David had fallen hard for one of the girls,
Solange, and was wandering around in a mournful daze after having
failed to pluck up the courage to ask her for her address:
"Oh, I really like Solange," he whined, over and over again, but
his misery was genuine. That is, until Jack handed him a piece of
paper containing Solange's address. It transpired she'd scrawled
it down just before leaving them, and for a time, David was drunk
with relief at the news, just walking on air, because there was
the danger of his coming down with a serious case of lovesickness
had she become lost to him forever, but thanks to Jack, he'd
found her again.
There were heavy storms, and on at least one occasion, the crew
were ordered out of their hammocks in the middle of the night to
help trim the sails, and while David took no part in this, he did
climb the rigging once, just before the Sir Francis Drake docked
at Amsterdam harbour.
Dozens of boys manned the yard arms, to which they were attached
by their safety belts alone. David had been determined to make
the climb, even though the experience made his legs shake
throughout.
The Dutch capital was marked by the same kind of open sexual
licence he'd witnessed only the year before in Hamburg, although
it seemed to him to lack the German city's sinister vibrancy.
Then - just as today - the sad De Wallen red-light district was
filled to the brim with hundreds of little illuminated one-room
apartments, each with a single woman sitting in clear view of
onlookers plying her lonely trade.
As for Edinburgh, just before setting foot in the city for the
first time, one of the lads, dressed to the nines himself in the
trendiest seventies gear, warned David not to go strutting about
Edinburgh town centre in a flashy boating blazer with his long
white socks tucked into the same blue jeans he'd worn for
sailing. But having only packed a handful of clothes, David was
forced to ignore his advice, and, waltzing some time later into
an inner city pub in broad daylight, a grinning hard man with
long reddish curly hair asked him:
"Are you frae Oxford, son?"
Perhaps he was aware of the great university's reputation for
producing flaming aesthetes like Brideshead's Anthony Blanche,
and if so, it may have been touch and go for a while as to
whether he was going to inflict some serious damage on David's
angelic English face, but in the end he left him be. He may even
have admired his chutzpah. But there was just something about
David, something that repelled physical violence, some mysterious
protective force.
Within a few weeks of returning to London by train from
Edinburgh, David and Dany were off to sea again, this time as
part of the Mariners' Club of Great Britain, bound for the Baltic
coast of Denmark by way of Germany's Kiel Canal. And while they
were once more supervised by "mates" under the command of a
Ship's Captain, the Mariners' utilised modern yachts rather than
traditional tall ships.
The Cristiansens were quick to recruit a good looking young guy
called Cy from Wotton-under-Edge in Gloucestershire as their best
pal and confidante for the trip. It turned out they'd actually
met him some ten years previously while passing through Calpe,
Spain, either on their way to or from their grandmother Mary's
home on the Costa Brava.
Soon after setting foot on Danish soil they got talking to a
couple of girls who, as might be expected, had natural golden
blonde hair, but their efforts at romance were wholly innocuous,
despite the reputation Scandinavians had in those days for
progressive sexual attitudes.
A less pleasant romantic episode took place towards the end of
the trip, which saw David in pursuit of a pretty German girl
called Ulrike. He was crazy for her, and she made it pretty clear
she liked him too, and yet he'd senselessly sidelined her for the
sake of a night of drunken idiocy with his brother and Cy,
perhaps expecting her to run after him or something.
Suddenly, overtaken by sickly pangs of remorse, he set out to
find her, and at some point during his quest, while walking along
some kind of wooden pontoon, he lost his footing and fell fully
clothed into the waters of what must have been the Kiel
Canal.
He was a pathetic figure the next day, with his fancy dandy
clothes all laid out on deck.
"What happened last night?" the captain breezily asked him.
"Well," he hazarded in response, "I was looking for this girl
and"
"You live in a dream world, David."
Indeed he did, and self-sabotage was fast becoming one of his
specialities.
Also during that summer, David attempted to pass what is known as
the AIB - or Admiralty Interview Board - with a view to
qualifying as a Supply and Secretariat officer in the Royal
Navy.
Up to this point, he'd not had any ambitions beyond becoming a
celebrity, or rather major Rock and Roll star. And to this end,
he'd made countless recordings of himself singing and playing his
own simple songs on a series of portable cassette tape recorders.
And all too often, these sessions culminated in a full-on
tantrum, such as the time he hurled a newly purchased machine
against his bedroom wall, totalling it instantly.
So he took the train from Hampton Court to London Waterloo; and
thence to the south coast of England, to spend three days within
the gates of HMS Stirling, a shore-based specialist training
centre in Gosport, Hampshire, attending various examinations and
interviews intended to assess his potential as a future naval
officer.
His father was delighted at this unexpected turn of events,
little suspecting that in his desire to join the Senior Service,
he was driven not by any selfless instinct to serve, so much as a
vision of a privileged existence of refinement and elegance. And
if this sounds distinctly Wildean for a mid 1970s youth, then it
was perfectly in keeping with what we've learned of David so
far.
For as stated earlier, he'd never been anything other than a
typical scruffy, sporty, ruffianly male until around about his
17th birthday, when he fell under the spell of Glam Rock.
And about a year after that, he started to move away from the
gaudiness of Glam towards a fascination for those artists whose
rebellion against middle class respectability manifested itself
as dandyism, or the tendency to ostentatiously over-dress. And
this they invariably combined with that typical corollary of
dandyism, decadence.
They included poets Charles Baudelaire, who affected dandyism in
the Paris of the 1840s, Jean Cocteau, whose playground was the
Paris of the so-called Belle Époque, and the aforesaid Oscar
Wilde, whose delight it was to scandalise the late Victorian
bourgeoisie of the London of the 1880s and '90s.
Thence, David arrived at HMS Stirling as an immaculate aesthete.
Doubtless complete with foundation style make up and some blusher
and eye shadow, where most of the other candidates might have
favoured standard issue jumbo collared shirts and great billowing
flared trousers.
His foppish attire was compounded by a face that would have made
him a perfect choice for a casting director scouting around for
someone to play Dorian Gray in yet another celluloid version of
Wilde's only novel. By the same token, he could have played
Waugh's Sebastian Flyte with no less facility...or Highsmith's
Dickie Greenleaf...or any number of kindred idle male beauties.
But the role of a naval officer was clearly way beyond him, and
it wouldn't be long before he'd provoked someone of a more
serious cast of mind to intense irritation.
The "someone" in question turned out to be a northern lad with a
little hint of a moustache who, finding David putting the final
touches to his toilette before some assignment or another in
front of a handy looking glass, felt moved to remind him:
"Its not a fashion parade, mate"
He wouldn't be joining David at the disco that night, or any
other night for that matter; but you couldn't fault his
dedication, nor his powers of observation.
Two guys were eventually persuaded to keep him company, but their
hearts weren't in it, and they sensibly returned to base for an
early night, leaving David alone at the disco, where he
befriended a shy young woman with short golden curls by the name
of Shirlee, with whom he spoke about the AIB, and his fear of
failing.
"Oh, you'll pass," she told him with a reassuring smile.
But if she'd looked a little closer at his wardrobe, with its
boating blazers and striped college ties, and shoes fit for the
Charleston rather than the Latin Hustle, she might not have
spoken so confidently. For, far from bespeaking the status of the
perpetual high achiever, they may have constituted a disguise,
distinctly overdone, and donned daily by an individual who'd
tasted failure too many times for one of such tender years.
When David finally returned to Stirling himself, he was shocked
to discover that her main entrance had been locked and was now
being manned by an armed guard.
As the young man set about trying to make contact with his
superiors, he must have wondered what kind of person returns to
base in the small hours, dressed to the nines, while in the midst
of three days of tests and interviews that were supposedly vital
to his future career. But he gave no indication of it.
And in time, his efforts were successful, so that shortly
afterwards, a sheepish David Cristiansen was forced to pass
through an officer's mess in order to reach his room. And after
briefly exchanging pleasantries with its airily affable
occupants, he retired for the night.
As might be expected, David failed in his noble attempt at
passing the AIB, and never did get to wear a naval officer's
uniform.
Perhaps he'd have stood a better chance if just for once he'd
done the right thing and gone to bed early rather than rave it up
at the disco in all his finery, but then again perhaps not. For
after all, few if any naval officers have been historically
selected on the basis of how good they look in a well-cut
uniform.
Like all dandies he could be said to have partaken to some degree
of the nature of the infamous Biblical character Absalom, about
whom it was said in 2 Samuel 14: 25:
"But in all Israel there was none to be so much praised as
Absalom for his beauty: from the sole of his foot even to the
crown of his head there was no blemish in him."
And yet, Absalom's flawless beauty was ill-matched by a vain and
reckless character which ultimately secured his ruin. As to
David, despite exceptional artistic gifts, he'd spend much of his
early adult life trying to find a place for himself in the world
with little real success. And on those precious few occasions
when those gifts came close to fulfilling his lifelong dreams of
fame and glory, all too often, he mysteriously sabotaged his
chances. It was as if despite his endless self-promotion, he felt
that failure was all he deserved; and so failure became his
destiny.
The summer of '75 also saw David spending a week with the RNR in
the Pool of London, a stretch of the Thames lying between London
Bridge and Rotherhithe.
Halfway through the week, he decided to attend a nearby club
known as the Little Ship, which he knew for a fact to be hosting
a discotheque. For oh how he loved to dance - quite alone - to
the sweetest Soul music, for Soul it was still known in '75, as
opposed to Disco.
And Disco he came to associate with a commercialised form he saw
as closer to pure Pop than Soul. And which was epitomised at its
best by the Bee Gees' soundtrack to "Saturday Night Fever", for
which he had a lot of respect, and its worst by the infamous
Disco novelty song.
And so dressed in a white open neck shirt worn sporting style
with striped boating blazer and white trousers and shoes, he made
his way to the Little Ship alone.
Once he'd had a drink or two, and the Soul had seeped through to
his bones, he hit the dance floor possibly with a cigarette
smouldering elegantly in his hand, and he was in his element. But
within a short time of his having done so, the up tempo songs
gave way to a long series of slow tunes, and he began to scan the
departing dancers for a partner.
Soon his unfeasibly long-lashed blue eyes fell upon a slim girl
with a head of bobbed curls of a striking yellowy blonde, who was
frantically shooing her friend away in order to make room for
David; and he walked up to her and asked her to dance. She
agreed, and they danced, wordlessly, for what must have been a
full half hour, until, exhausted, David's new found companion
informed him she had to rejoin her friend, which she did, leaving
David at a loss as to what to do next.
The bond had been broken. But then, as they'd not exchanged a
word despite having been intimately locked together for aeons,
there'd barely been one to begin with. And then he spied her at
the bar, conversing with her friend, and he acted cool towards
her, as she did him, and they made no effort to approach each
other, and the moment was gone for good.
Perhaps David then returned to the floor to dance alone as he'd
done earlier, like some kind of Mod, lost in a narcissistic
reverie.
But David was no refugee from an age when peacock males were
supposed to have been more interested in their beautiful images
than any romantic experience with a woman. For later that night,
while a power boat was ferrying him out to his ship in the
glittering Pool of London, he announced to one of the officers
onboard:
"I'm in love!"
At which point the officer, a tall languorously elegant man with
a charming, approachable manner, graciously replied:
"That's good news."
But if he'd divined the condition of the handsome sailor's soul,
he'd have spoken differently. Yes, David was in love, but his
love was nowhere to be seen, and he'd returned from his night of
dancing desperate to be reunited with the slim blonde angel he'd
held so close for a blissfully brief thirty minutes or so, only
to lose her forever.
But that was David, and he'd be back on that disco floor again
before too long, risking his heart again before too long, dying a
little of his solitude again before too long. And oh how he loved
to dance.

Since 1974, David had worshipped at the altar of those artists
who had either immediately predated the age of Modernism or been
part of its Banquet Years, and beyond into the Golden Twenties
and so on.
However, in '76, a gaudy new era started to influence the way he
dressed and acted, and for much of that year, he dressed down in
a workmanlike uniform of red windcheater, white tee-shirt and
cuffed jeans as worn by '50s icon James Dean in "Rebel Without a
Cause".
Dean had died a week to the day before David was born in late
1955, and the 20th anniversary of his death appeared to exert a
strong influence on rising Pop stars such as John Miles and
Slik's Midge Ure.
Slik were one of the biggest bands in Britain in 1976 with an
image straight out of "Rebel" or a dozen lesser fifties
delinquent movies. Sadly for them, though, and for many other
bands who'd surfed the Glam Rock wave or emerged in its wake,
they would be unjustly ousted by the Punk uprising.
As entranced as David was by the fifties, there were still times
when he reverted to the old escapist dandy image he'd adopted in
defiance of what he saw as the leaden drabness of post-Hippie
Britain, while discovering Modernist giants such as Baudelaire,
Wilde, Gide, and Cocteau for the first time.
One of these occasions came during the dying days of a famous
long hot summer, when he wore top hat and tails and his
fingernails painted bright red like some kind of hellish vision
from Weimar Berlin to a party hosted by a friend from
Prestlands.
It was mid-September, and David would have been at sea at the
time, serving as Able Seaman David Cristiansen on the minesweeper
HMS Kettleton.
A day or so afterwards, there was an accident involving Kettleton
and a far larger ship, which resulted in the loss of twelve men,
most of whom he knew personally. Of the twelve who didn't
survive, David knew three quite well, and they were all men of
remarkable generosity of spirit and sweetness of disposition, and
it broke his heart to think of what happened to them.
He so wanted to comfort his shipmates for their loss, to bond
with them and be part of what they were going through. He wanted
to have survived like them; and he went over it all again and
again in his mind, until he was driven almost insane with regret
and grief. But he'd taken the easy way out, and this time it
wouldn't be so easy for him to forget or explain away.
And the world took a darker turn for David Cristiansen, as the
following year was marked by the irruption into the British
cultural mainstream of Punk.
From its London axis, it spread like a raging plague, even
infecting the most genteel suburbs with an extreme and often
horrifying sartorial eccentricity, which, fused with a defiant
DIY ethic and a brutal back-to-basics brand of hard-driving Rock
produced something utterly unique even by the standards of the
time.
David was assaulted for the first time by the monstrous varieties
of dress adopted by the early Punks while strolling along the
Kings Road the morning after a party in what may have been
January 1977, and it would only be a matter of time before he too
hoped to astound others the way they'd done him.
However, for most of '77, he dressed in a muted form which first
took shape as a pair of cream brogue winkle pickers. And which he
went on to supplement with black slip-ons with gold side buckles,
mock-crocodile skin shoes with squared off toes, and a pair of
black Chelsea boots. All perilously pointed; in fact so much so
that within a year or so, they'd finish up being jettisoned into
the murky black waters of the Thames.
His new look evolved by degrees at the endless series of parties
he attended as one after the other of his old Welbourne pals
celebrated their 21st in houses and apartments in various corners
of trendy West and Central London.
Of all of these, he was perhaps closest with future oil magnate
Chris, who was still finding his feet in London's most exalted
social circles. These included Adrian Proust, a friend of Chris'
from the north of England who forged cutting edge images for some
of the most powerful trendsetters in Rock music.
David joined them a couple of times at Maunkberrys in Jermyn
Street; and apart from the Sombrero in High Street Ken, it was
the classiest club his suburban eyes had ever seen.
Being the rube he was, he thought the style that dominated
London's club land was somehow Punk-related, but he was way off
the mark. While it was the antithesis of the hippie look that was
still widespread throughout the UK, it was deployed not as a
gesture of violent social dissent, but for posing and dancing to
the sweetest Soul music.
It was partly the realm of the Soul Boys, whose love of Black
Dance music was a legacy of the Mods and Skins that preceded
them.
Yet while the Soul Boys were largely working class hard nuts from
various dismal London suburbs, some Soul lovers were in fact not
Soul Boys at all, so much as elegant trendies. But with a
penchant for floppy college boy fringes, plaid shirts worn over
plain white tee-shirts, straight leg jeans, and the by now
obligatory winkle pickers. And these were the kind to be found at
such sumptuous places as the Sombrero.
The Soul Boys also favoured the wedge haircut, which could be
worn with streaks of blond or red or even green,
brightly-coloured peg-top trousers and winkle pickers or plastic
beach sandals.
Speaking of the wedge, it was taken up at some point in the late
1970s by a faction of Liverpool football fans who'd developed a
taste for European designer sportswear while travelling on the
continent for away matches. Thence, the Casual subculture was
spawned.
And its passion for designer labels persisted well into the
2010s, being manifest in every small town and shopping mall
throughout the land.
By the summer, David was working as a sailing instructor in
Palamos on Spain's Costa Brava, although he lost his job after
only a few months. But instead of heading straight back to
London, he chose to stay on in Palamos, parading around town by
day, while spending most of his evenings at the Disco dancing to
Donna Summer's "Love Trilogy".
As much as he loved the party life, what he wanted most of all
was to enjoy it as a successful working actor like golden boys
Peter Firth and Gerry Sundquist, both of whom found fame on the
stage before branching out into movies and TV, although Firth had
begun his acting life as a child star.
The problem was, he wasn't really cut out for the task. Granted,
he had the pretty boy looks, but very few actors, or even
musicians, become truly successful on the strength of looks
alone, and this was especially true of the seventies, an age
without MP3s or My Space or endless TV talent showcases.
He'd had no acting experience to speak of, except a handful of
roles at Welbourne, all but one of which involved him wearing
women's clothing.
The first was in Max Frisch's "The Fire Raisers", which saw him
standing stock still as an old woman for a few brief minutes
without uttering a single word.
The second, in a short play by George Bernard Shaw called
"Passion, Poison and Petrifaction", saw him clomping around as a
household maid in dress and studded military boots, and each time
he spoke in the falsetto he'd selected for the part, the house
erupted.
A third garnered some praise from one of the cadets for a
convincing performance as a Holly Golightly style socialite;
while his only male role was as psychopath Alec in a little known
Agatha Christie one-acter called "The Rats", one of whose key
lines was:
"Darlings, how devastating!"
And if the praise of the college nurse was anything to go by, it
showed real promise:
"What are you going to do with your life, David? You're a good
actor"
But when all's said and done, he was hardly a National Youth
Theatre wunderkind. And in terms of his other "talents", he'd
written a few simple songs on the guitar, but he still couldn't
play bar chords. Although he managed a passable take-off of
Sinatra.
While as a would-be writer, he'd filled countless pages with
endlessly corrected notes, but there was nothing tangible to show
for it all. It could hardly be said then that his future
positively glittered before him.